Impressions with Perspective

Following conventions we know how to make and recognize a pie. We begin with a circle; a circular pie plate fitted with a circular crust.  We know it’s a pie when it comes in a circle. Pictures follow similar conventions.  Pies and Pictures follow standard models. We improvise on the model. Whether painting an interior or painting street scene the basic model remains.  There are two flanking walls and a ground that recede in synchrony according the principles of linear perspective.

In the mid 1800s Japanese artists like Hiroshige borrowed the standard western model of a populated view down an avenue and also applied the principles of linear perspective (example 1).  Artists like Monet improvised with this standard model. In his train station series we find the two conventional flanking walls and the receding floor or ground (Example 2). His innovations were to cap the rectangle with a triangle, dissolve some edges and focal acuity through atmospherics with glaring sunlight and locomotive steam.

Later in the twentieth century artists like Giacometti who were well versed in linear perspective applied the traditional model to an interior (example 3). The sitting figure assumes the role of Monet’s locomotive. The edges come in and out of focus as we move into the space.  21^st century artists like Paige Laughlin again return to innovate with the standard interior model and allow the furniture to function as the flanking walls while the beholder follows the floor’s linear vectors into the picture. Her image offers a secondary grid using a squared assembly of four artworks on the far wall. They serve as both a destination and a device to expand the space (example 4).

Example 1. Hiroshige,1850s,

Example 2. Claude Monet,

Example 3. Alberto Giacometti, mid 20^th century,

Example 4. Paige Laughlin, contemporary,

Just as Paige Laughlin used complementary color relationships, orange vs. ultramarine blue and yellow vs. violet I used similar complementary colors when developing my “57^th Street in the Rain” (examples 5 and 6). Impressionists were found of using tints, that is mixing white into their colors for a lighter brighter effect. You may observe I did the same. I blurred the edges and the shape of the objects more than Monet could have dared in the 1870s.  He lacked precedents for such distortions but, photography would soon provide ample examples.

Example 5. Step one, 57^th Street Rain,

Example 6. Step two, 57^th Street Rain,

Returning to the more limited palette of both Hiroshige and Monet I began painting my next example 7, “East 62^nd”.  I followed Monet’s atmospheric dissolution of edges especially in the distance and on the flanking walls. Monet’s urban atmosphere was occluded by locomotive steam. My atmosphere evokes vaporizing sunlight.  The rectangular dark frame also alludes to structures found in the previous examples.

Example 7. 57^th Street Rain,